> I do remember the days of sending cash through the post but I don't think that's what the author is suggesting.

That may be exactly what he's suggesting. The VPN provider he works for (IVPN) allows payment by mail by cash.

On my country at least there is a trend that only registered costumers have promotions and discounts, but what really happens is that the price of the things go up and the registered costumers pay the 'normal' price.

I'm not buying anymore on theses type of stores (markets and restaurants mostly), but this is keeping growing difficult because every other week more and more business are starting to ask for my 'credentials'.

Use fakes. In the US there's a famous song called Jenny with the phone number 867-5309 in the lyrics. Everyone over age 30 knows that number by heart, and a fair number younger too.

Simply give (your local area-code)-867-5309 and there's a very good chance that someone's already signed up with that number. If not, I'll complete the signup with that number and whatever bogus name comes to mind. Jacob Blues, 1060 W Addison 60613 works well.

Just like AdNauseam, simply chaff the system until it's futile.

I'm sure there are similar characters in the public consciousness of every country.

Shouldn't the first name always be Jenny for 857-5309? Otherwise the next person is screwed when the cashier (potentially) asks for a name.

i think they are referring to vpn services that don't require you to create an account with name/contact/etc. For instance, the one I use, they create a bitcoin wallet, once that wallet receives coins, it generates a random string username and random string password, and that is the entire "signup" process.

If it's not too much trouble which VPN would this be? I know of some that offer crypto payments but a real user recommendation is always welcome.

I don't recommend it since it's a security-sensitive topic and I don't know anything about their backend or their exit nodes or their custom vpn client... but to answer the first question i use Private Internet Access.

Thanks for the reply and caveat though.

this use case is a huge part of why bitcoin exists, it's hard to exclude from the conversation.